The Baby Name Wizard

Admit it. You love stupid names.
Oh, it's not that you're about to name your twin sons Pink and Dink. But you get a wicked little thrill hearing about celebrities who saddle their kids with outrageous names. In the newspaper birth announcements, you can't help scanning for further evidence that parents today have simply lost their minds.
None of us is immune to this schadenfreude. It's the first question most reporters ask me: "what are parents thinking with names like..." In fact, there are now whole websites devoted to making fun of other people's names. And underlying it all is a presumption that names are getting worse. The popularity of luxury brand names like Lexus and Armani, for instance, is taken as a symbol of cultural decadence.
Before we proclaim a naming apocalypse, a bit of perspective is in order. Allow me to present some of the top 1000 names of the ' 80s and '90s. The 1880s and 1890s, that is.
The boys Pink and Dink? Not so strange back in those days. In fact, Pink ranked as high as #304 among boys back in 1881. Here are some other choice names of the period. To keep it fair, all these names made the top 1000 list in at least four different years:

BOYS
GIRLS

Flem
Icy

Clell
Dicy

Ples
Mintie

Cloyd
Tinnie

Bee
Viney

Gee
Birdie

Irl
Biddie

Purl
Pinkie

Perley
Mammie

Burley
Lockie

Okey
Lovie

Zollie
Anner

Author
Lular

Lawyer
Ellar

Fate
Dellar

Creed
Arizona

Handy
Florida

Chancy
Indiana

Pleasant
Missouri

Golden
Nevada

Love
Tennessee

Park
Tiny

Press
Fairy

Math
Queen

Shade
Novella

Price
Edmonia

Worth
Permelia

Toy
Lugenia

Coy
Ova

Orange
Media

Lemon
Floy

It's an impressive lineup, and only the tip of the iceberg. In fact, some of the most distinctive styles of the 1880s-90s turn out to echo today's trends. You find lots of place names, surnames and word-based names. (Perhaps Gwyneth Paltrow wouldn't have caught so much flak for naming her daughter Apple in a world with boys named Orange and Lemon.) Standing in for the luxury brands of the modern world are names like Noble, Royal, Silver and Golden. And just as today, you notice hundreds and hundreds of freshly invented names with endless variations on a theme. Dessie-Hessie-Lessie-Ressie-Tessie, meet Ayla-Jayla-Kayla-Layla-Shayla.
The real difference, of course, is at the top of the charts. For boys especially, a handful of names led by John, William and James were utterly dominant at the head of the curve, followed by a sharp drop off. The #1 boys name of the 1880s was twelve times as popular as the #20 name. Last year, that ratio was down to 2 to 1. The curve is flatter, and it changes our perceptions. Instead of meeting John after John after John, the names we hear are less predictable...and the strangest ones seem like a sign of the times. And to an extent they are, as I'll talk about next time.

A reader, watching radar images of swirling winds, sent in an intriguing question: have names of hurricanes influenced parents' baby name choices?

The U.S. National Weather Service has been naming hurricanes to aid tracking since 1953. Lists are set in advance with an alphabetical set of names assigned to each year. All storms received female names until 1979 when, realizing that men too are capable of widespread destruction, the NWS switched to alternating sexes.

On the face of it, a calamitous storm seems an unlikely choice to inspire parents' name choices. You might expect a name's popularity to dip after an association with death and disaster. Yet there's also the simple exposure effect to consider. A name that tops the headlines day after day could rise to the top of parents' consciousness.

In fact, you can see both the positive and negative effects in U.S. hurricane/baby history. The net impact, I believe, depends on the name's baseline popularity -- how familiar it sounded before the storm. A classic, familiar name doesn't benefit much from media exposure because it's already at ceiling for public awareness. So the overall impact of a hurricane with a name like Andrew is neutral to negative (green bar=storm year):

But for a name with a lower profile, the media boost is huge and can translate to a sharp rise in the name. Hurricane Camille lashed the Southeast in 1969:

I rather expected to see a second split in name effects based on geography. It seemed reasonable that parents who hear the news but are far removed from the destruction might lean more toward the name, while parents in the eye of the storm would stay away. But take a look at the numbers for Texas, which bore the brunt of Hurricane Alicia in 1983:

It's an impressive demonstration that "any publicity is good publicity." Yet not just any name will rise with the tides. Even the biggest storm won't rescue a name that's already fallen dramatically out of fashion, like Floyd in 1999. Looking ahead to names on the 2005-2007 lists, I wouldn't expect a revival of Harvey or Wilma. But a major storm named Ophelia, Rafael or Felix could leave plenty of namesakes in its wake.

A reader recently pointed me to an article that neatly links two recent topics here. The Washington Post reported that Factiva has tallied the top names for corporate chief executives: John, James and Robert. Well, the average CEO was born in 1948, and the top three names that year were...John, James and Robert. It's eerily reminiscent of the recent Barclay's Bank report on the highest-earning names, and my own comments on the most common names of presidents. In each case, the top names of the top dogs were the same as the top names of the general population.

I'll forgive you a yawn at this steady progression of non-news. Woo-hoo, the null hypothesis holds again! But as we watch the predictable rise of these predictable names, it's worth noting an important phenomenon:

Having ordinary names didn't ruin their lives.

As 21st-century parents, most of us want our kids' names to be distinctive. We feel that impulse as a matter of personal taste: you just happen to be the type to prefer unusual names. A widespread "individual" preference reveals an unspoken cultural norm.

I hear it most often in the form of protecting a child from excessive ordinariness. "I don't want her to have to be 'Jenny C.' in school," parents tell me. Fear of not fitting in, meanwhile, seems to be vanishing (among parents, not among kids). I don't claim to be immune to the trend myself -- I never considered the names Bob or Jim for my kids. Yet there are studies that suggest that kids with odd names may fare worse than kids with ordinary names, and we've just seen that the corridors of power are filled with the most ordinary names around. So for the sake of equal time, a reminder that "ordinary" names can also be:

• Timeless. Ernestine sounded like a fresh, fabulous idea around 1920. Today, it still sounds like someone born in 1920. Meanwhile names like Catherine and Elizabeth, which were far more common, actually sound fresher...because they didn't have a "freshness date" that passed.

In response to reader comments on presidential names, an extra tally:

Up through the mid-20th Century, a new American president was almost always immortalized by a crowd of newborn namesakes. Every presidential surname except Van Buren, Fillmore, Buchanan and Eisenhower has made the top-1000 name list at some point in the past 125 years. Today, though, parents are a little more wary about granting namesakes. They wait to see how the presidency is going to play out before committing a child's name to the cause. (The hundreds of boys named Harding in the early '20s would probably support this prudent approach.)

But presidential names as a whole are more popular today than ever before. Far, far more popular. Here's the overall presidential curve:

Aside from Arthur (which is kind of a cheat -- a classic first name rather than a converted surname), the presidential names used to be marginal. Now they're mainstream.

So what's the allure? I'll hazard a guess it's not just American patriotism, given all the Australian girls named Madison and the Canadian boys named Carter. And how many parents of a Tyler could even name that president's political party? But even when the presidential link is weak, its influence is there shaping the name's style. The presidential names epitomize what parents like about the surname style: names that feel familiar and substantial, but fresher than the classic English given names.

Here's the historical graph showing current popularity (for both sexes) vs. presidential chronology:

While it's tempting to read a lot into that curve, I think the results say more about style than politics. Most of the top choices fit stylish categories that I've discussed before, such as tradesman names (Taylor, Carter) and surnames that contract to traditional nicknames (Jefferson, Harrison). Meanwhile the cumbersome but strongly historical names like Washington and Roosevelt have disappeared. Perhaps most surprising is the recent scarcity of Lincolns. That's a swift, fashionable name with a strong nickname and even stronger heritage. Look for a comeback soon.

From today's UK headlines:

"Names affect top-earning potential"
"The key to a six-figure salary? It's all in the name"
"Want to earn £100K? Best make sure you're called David or Susan"

The details, courtesy of the Independent:

"What's in a name? The key to a lucrative lifestyle, it seems. Men called David and women called Susan are more likely to earn in excess of £100,000 a year, according to analysts working for Barclays Bank. Being christened John, Michael, Elizabeth or Sarah also gives you a higher chance of being a six- figure earner."

To quote the editor stung by the baby Yahoo hoax: "If it were real, it would have been a good story indeed." But the facts, alas, are much more mundane.

Barclays did not, as the papers report, list names with a high rate of earning high wages. They did not look at the percentage of Susans and Davids pulling in the pounds. They simply sifted through their records of customers earning more than £100,000 a year, and listed the names that occurred most often. In other words, they came up with a list of the most common names for mid-career Englishmen (and women.)

Here's the full list:

GIRLS
Susan
Elizabeth
Sarah
Jane
Helen
Patricia
Jacqueline
Alison
Anne
Nicola

BOYS
David
John
Michael
Paul
Andrew
Richard
Robert
Mark
Stephen

I don't have good historical figures for England, but based on US and Scotland data those names (especially the boys) look like a snapshot of the 1940s-1960s. That's precisely what you'd expect if names had no effect on earning power -- the opposite of what the headlines claimed.

In the modern economy, a typical worker sees a sharp increase in real wages until about age 35. The pace of increase then slows, with a relative plateau of 20 years at peak earnings followed by a gradual decline. The historical figures for women will be skewed somewhat by the advent of the sexual revolution; a girl born in 1950 faced a very different professional landscape than one born in 1970. So sticking to the boys, here's the US popularity curve for the Barclays names:

As you would predict from the economic lifecycle curve, the names on the Barclays list were big hits about 35-55 years ago. Based on this, I wouldn't rush out and change my name to Davy-Sue.

But before we brush this off and move on, one name did strike me...by its absence. James was the #1 name in America over the period 1940-1970, and reached close to that level of popularity in the Scotland sample as well. In the U.S. it's an across-the-board classic, unusually free of class, race, or sectarian associations. So a call out to UK readers: why didn't James make the list?

It's no secret that a well-named celebrity can start a new baby-naming trend. But the perception of celebrity influence is often greater than the reality. Such is the case with little Emma, born to Rachel and Ross of "Friends" in May, 2002. She's often cited as the source of the name Emma's popularity, but that name was chosen for the character in reflection of reality: it was already a top choice of fashionable urban parents like Rachel and Ross. (In Washington D.C., a particularly fashion-forward name district, Emma was the #2 name of 2001.)

Similarly, several people have written in here suggesting that the Aidan craze originated with a character on "Sex and the City." While that exposure probably gave the name an extra boost, the character name was again more a reflection of the trend than its source. Before 1990, Aidan had never appeared in the U.S. top thousand. By late 2001, when the Aidan character appeared on "Sex & the City," it was already a top hundred name, and 27 other rhyme-twins (Braden, Cayden, et al) were in the top 1000.

Which brings us to the ultimate celebrity name, Shirley. Shirley Temple was the top box-office star of the 1930s. From about 1934 (Little Miss Marker) to 1939 (The Little Princess), she was an absolute phenomenon...and those same years mark the name Shirley's stint as a top-five name for American girls. Little Miss Temple has routinely been credited with the name's popularity by name writers, me included. Should we think again? Sociologist Stanley Lieberson, in his masterful opus A Matter of Taste, notes that Shirley Temple was actually part of an existing Shirley wave. (She was, after all, only five years old when Little Miss Marker was made.) In fact, the name was already in the top 10 when Temple was born.

Yet it's hard to imagine that an angelic, immensely popular child star wouldn't have a big naming impact. After all, she must have been on parents' minds. In 1939, you could no more name a girl Shirley without thinking of Shirley Temple than you could name a boy Roosevelt without thinking of the president. But perhaps the name had already reached its saturation point...or perhaps the high starting rank has simply camouflaged the fame effect.

Shirley was the #9 name of Shirley Temple's pre-stardom 1933, and the #2 name of post-stardom 1935. A pretty modest change in rank. But as I'm always muttering to any who'll listen, you can't tell diddly from ranks. Take a look at what really happened in those two years:

From 1933 to 1935, the number of Shirleys born tripled - an extraordinary leap for a name that was already so popular. This Shirley Temple spike, accounting for tens of thousands of babies, is one of the sharpest name spikes America has ever seen.

Temple's impact was so strong that it sent out ripples extending to other names. Her appearances as "Heidi" and "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" sparked jumps in those names, and the dormant name Penelope suddenly hit the charts after Shirley played a Penelope in Now and Forever. But most telling is the pattern of names similar to Shirley. Early in the 20th Century Shirley was an anomaly, a surname used primarily for girls (thanks to the title heroine of a Charlotte Brontë novel.) It stayed that way for decades, until the Good Ship Lollipop sailed into the zeitgeist. Then see what happened:

Shelby: Not on the top-1000 name list in 1934, Shirley Temple's breakout year. By 1937, it was #119.

Shelley: Virtually unknown until the late 1930s, when it began a slow but steady rise until Shelley Winters (born Shirley) hit it big in the late '40s.

Sherry: Slow but steady rise from the mid-20s to 1934. Then from 1934 to 1935, the number of Sherrys more than doubled.

You can't say that Shirley Temple was responsible for the name Shirley's popularity. There would be plenty of 70-year-old Shirleys out there even without her. But few people in modern times have had a more dramatic impact on American names.

The quest for name individuality is a common theme I hear from parents. Change is accelerating, the name pool is expanding, and parents are treating "popular" as a dirty word. It tells us a lot about our culture and values. But it also tells us something about our technology.

Most of us share our full name with others -- sometimes hundreds of others. A generation ago, that seldom mattered. So there's another Sarah Stubblefield three states over, who cares? But in a networked, searchable world, our name twins are suddenly closer than ever before.

Type "Laura Wattenberg" into Google and you'll get a pure dose of baby name wizardry. Wattenberg, though, is my married name. I was born Laura Miller. Google that name and you'll find results for hundreds of women, including a Salon editor and the current mayor of Dallas. I'm sure my old single self is in there somewhere, but who could find her?

For some tech-focused families, "Googleability" is now a prime baby-naming requirement. If a full name yields too many Google results, they toss it out. Many of these parents are reacting to their own frustration with mistaken identity. Once you've been one of seven Tom Wilsons in your company directory, you learn to crave the clarity of a unique name. For others, a Googleable name is a fashion statement. They'll even make sure a .com domain name is available for their baby-to-be, like the ultimate vanity license plate.

There are undeniable practical benefits to a unique name. The Boston Globe recently chronicled the woes of a man whose driver's license was revoked because he shared a name with a repeat vehicular offender. In my case, back in my Laura Miller days I once moved to a new town and started getting phone calls intended for another Laura Miller. Judging from the nature of the calls, that other Laura offered certain...er...personal services I wasn't about to provide. As a Wattenberg, mistaken identity is a thing of the past. Arguably, there's also a psychological lift from feeling that you're not just one of an indistiguishable crowd.

Yet there's an upside to anonymity, too. It's called privacy. Kids growing up today are leaving a trail of information footprints, opening stray details of their lives to the public. The same unique moniker that sets you apart from the crowd makes you and your past instantly trackable. Even innocuous aspects of your life can be personal, and over the long run you might not want everyone you meet to be able to learn about them with a single click.

How about those old college party photos? Picture a new boyfriend 5 years down the line Googling the snapshots of you with with your old boyfriend...and the one before him, and the one before him. Or think of a prospective employer (because they will Google you, you can be certain.) Did they need to see that picture of the tattoo on your rear end before meeting you? Worse yet, did they need to know all about your religious, political and sexual inclinations? It's none of their business. But thanks to a long-forgotten messageboard post, or organizational newsletter, or friend's blog, it may be there for the reading.

No new parent ever dreams of the future and thinks, "I want to make sure my child will be able to hide his tracks!" But we do think about protecting our kids, including protecting them from kinds of material they can find online. It's also worth thinking about the kinds of material they can put online. The more distinctive your child's name, the stronger the trail she'll leave behind, for whomever might be looking. A young Sirrenity Stubblefield should learn to think hard before she posts.

Please join with me in celebrating a milestone with a member of the Baby Name Wizard family. The NameVoyager visualization has just received its first upgrade, with expanded data and a few new tricks up its sleeve.

The two changes NameVoyager users will notice most:

Happy exploring!

Some additional data notes, for the hardcore NameVoyager fans:

The popularity figures now go up through 2004, the most recent numbers available. I've used 2004 as the sole representative for the current decade, rather than mixing scales of data. Thanks to reader requests, I'll be planning a separate version of the program with a detailed focus on the past decade.

The data in this version represents a fuller sample of babies, courtesy of new Social Security Administration figures. For the 1940s on, the sample is a close approximation of the full U.S. newborn population. The earliest years' numbers, though, are based on more skewed samples. For instance, the sex ratio is skewed dramatically toward girls in the 19th-century samples. I adopted a new normalization technique to correct for these differences, and informal data checks suggest that the trends in the early data are still suitably representative of the general population. Also, you may notice that the full "sea of names" view has a slightly different shape, reflecting a tweaked data prep process. The height of the total population for a given decade now accurately shows the proportion of babies receiving a top-1000 name.

Last week I wrote about the use of high-status professional titles as names in the 19th Century. In fact, occupational first names are more popular today than ever before, with 14 of them among the top 500 names for American boys. But while the boys of the 1880s were anointed Kings and Admirals, 21st-century boys are being named for humbler stations. They are workers and tradesmen: barrel makers, goods haulers, stone workers. Which is to say, Coopers, Carters, Masons.

Here's a graph of 25 familar tradesman names over time:

Unlike the young Judges and Dukes, it's a fair bet these names aren't chosen to be aspirational. No parent of a Carter is dreaming of the day he'll be hauling around a cartload of grain. The occupations shape our impressions of the names indirectly, with several layers of meaning distancing us from the reality of the work.

First off, the fashionable trade names are generally familiar as last names. When you hear Cooper, Carter and Mason, they probably strike you as surnames as much as tradesmen. Those surnames also carry their own cultural resonance, from Gary Cooper to Jimmy Carter to Perry Mason.

Perhaps most important, though, is the fact that they just don't make barrels like they used to. Cooper isn't a likely career path today, any more than Tucker (cloth finisher) or Parker (gamekeeper). The implied physicality of the names is part of their appeal -- these are men of action! Yet that ruggedness takes the form of a rough-hewn romantic glow, born of the luxury of not having to actually do the jobs any more. Ever met a boy named Painter or Plumber? Modern trades are a little too real for comfort.

Rustic or modern, the fact remains that we're naming boys for the lower rungs of of the ladder -- Gunners and Riders rather than Generals and Commodores. A smattering of girls are getting into the act too, most notably Hunters and Taylors. But girls are also increasingly named Heaven, Miracle and Destiny. We're sending our girls skyward, and keeping our boys ever more earthbound.